He turned and ambled away, feeling as if he’d just dodged a deadly bullet. Some sixth sense had warned him against letting that kiss go any further. He knew that if he’d made Elena helpless in his arms, she would never have forgiven him. And he knew he would never have been able to forget Elena.
Chapter Two
Her shift in the kissing booth over, Elena O’Brien pushed through the crowd in the direction she’d seen Logan take after he’d left her. Her fingers touched the folded bill stuffed in her pocket. It was the only thing that kept her going after him.
She’d rather be running in the opposite direction.
There was only one man who could make her feel adolescent-awkward. Only one man who could make her feel a half-shy, half-wild sixteen again, her shoes sliding off her heels because her abuela—grandmother—always bought them big for a growing girl. At sixteen she remembered her lips throbbing too, scrubbed clean at Nana’s insistence of the scarlet lipstick Elena wanted so badly to wear.
Only girls that were payo—trashy—painted their mouths. Girls who did such a thing—and in such a color!—got the wrong kind of attention from boys.
Her abuela, God rest her soul, had been right about that.
Now, all these years later, Elena didn’t have time for men and any kind of attention they might give her. Not when there was Gabby to think of and all the money that it would require to put her through college and then medical school. Elena was working two jobs already and, she thought with a sigh, she might have to pick up a third to pay for the damage the recent earthquake had done to the home she and Gabby had inherited from their grandmother.
Anyway, the truth was that Elena had lousy luck when it came to men. It wasn’t much hardship to sacrifice them so that her sister could achieve their dream.
Catching sight of broad shoulders and a dark golden head amongst those gathering around a small stage on her right, Elena’s feet paused of their own accord, her heart twitching in that stupid, childish way again. Despite the fact that Logan Chase was her best friend’s brother-in-law, she gave serious second thoughts to letting him live with his own mistake. She didn’t want another confrontation with him.
But she steeled her spine and headed his way, because she refused to be ruled by her ridiculous reactions to him. Pride demanded it. Anyway, he was never going to know how he affected her. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
She excused herself through the knot of people until she stood directly behind him. “Logan.” When he didn’t immediately turn, she touched his back.
Something jolted through her fingers, shooting up her arm. Logan jerked around.
“You,” he said, his brown eyes wide.
Elena stared. The word had briefly formed his mouth into a kiss and her lips started throbbing again. Not because he made her recall those lipstick scrubbings as she’d tried to tell herself before, but because not twenty minutes ago he’d pressed that mouth against hers. The kiss had spun her away from the kissing booth, from Strawberry Bay, even—unbelievably—from her worries and responsibilities.
Biting down on her betraying bottom lip, she shoved her hands in her pockets. The bill crackled against her fingers, reminding her she’d had a purpose beyond reliving that kiss to seek him out.
“You made a mistake,” she said, drawing out the thousand-dollar bill.
He glanced at the money, then back at her face. “Who’s in the kissing booth?”
Willing herself not to flush, she pretended she hadn’t admitted to him that her failure in the booth bothered her. “I took the first shift because everyone else had a conflict. This is the Homecoming Queen’s hour.”
“Ah.” His very white smile broke across his face, carving lines into his lean, tanned cheeks. “Good.”
Elena stiffened. “Yes, well, I’m sure she’ll have much better success.”
“Damn it, Elena.” Logan’s smile died and he pushed his dark gold hair behind his ears. It was longer than she’d ever seen it, almost messy, and it fell forward again immediately. He pushed at it once more, an awkward movement, as if he didn’t know how to manage the new length. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounds.”
“How did you mean it then?” Oh, she was proud of herself for how cool she sounded. Almost uncaring.
He muttered something under his breath. “I—”
The rest of his words were cut off by a trumpet fanfare from the speakers set up nearby. Almost immediately a line of teeny tiny girls in pink tights, leotards, and tap shoes shuffle-stepped onto the stage. The line leader carried a sign proclaiming them to be Miss Bunny’s Tapping Tots. Applause erupted from the crowd around them.
Logan said something to her, but it was lost in the first notes of “The Good Ship Lollipop.” Elena shook her head and pointed at her ears to indicate she couldn’t hear, bringing her attention back to the bill in her hand.
She held it mutely up to him.
He shook his head.
She shook it in his face. “A mistake,” she mouthed.
When he didn’t respond, she gritted her teeth and grabbed his arm to tow him somewhere quiet. She was due at her second job in less than an hour.
The art show was set up a little ways from the stage, and the panels on which the paintings were hung muffled most of the music. Elena halted in the first aisle and faced Logan. “This is your money,” she said, holding out the bill. When he’d dropped it in the bowl, she hadn’t immediately noticed its denomination because she’d been distracted—okay, fine, dazzled—by their kiss.
A small smile playing over his wide mouth, he pushed his hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking down on her. He was a rangy six-one or six-two, much taller than her five-feet-and-almost-five-inches. Maybe that was why he always managed to make her feel like she was on her first date.
Or maybe that was because he had been her first date.
“That’s the kissing booth’s money,” Logan said.
She frowned at him. “Do you need glasses or something? This is a thousand-dollar bill!”
He shrugged. “You don’t think you’re worth it?”
She swallowed a sound of annoyance. This is what he did to her. He either made her feel clumsy, cross or a lethal combination of the two that played havoc with her self-control. “Logan.”
“Hmm?”
“It’s no big deal.” Her voice was even, reasonable. Very mature. “You accidentally put the wrong bill into the jar. Give me five bucks, I’ll give you this back, and we’ll be fine.”
He laughed. “We haven’t been fine since—”
“Since my best friend started going out with your brother.” Her path and Logan’s hadn’t crossed for years, but then Annie and Griffin had fallen in love.
“I was going to say we haven’t been fine since the night we met.”
In an instant, Elena’s mouth dried. She’d been newly sixteen, newly orphaned, new to town. He’d been eighteen, golden, a man in her eyes. Her heart jumped around in her chest just as it had done then and she felt the flush of sexual arousal bloom over her skin, just as it had done then too. He’d awakened her that night.
Then a week later humiliated her.
Her fingers tightened on the crisp paper and she looked down at it, then back up to his face. “What game are you playing?” she said slowly.
Now it was his turn to look annoyed. “What the hell